Charting my adventures and obsessions, from a small town in Texas to Princeton, Russia, Latin America and beyond.

Friday, September 07, 2018

Fathers and Sons, Doors and Prisons

John S. McCain Jr. and George Stephen Morrison lived
parallel lives of military service. Both graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy—McCain
in 1931, Morrison in 1941. They served in the Pacific in World War II and had
careers that lasted into the Vietnam War era. McCain was Commander-in-Chief,
Pacific Command (CINCPAC), commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater
from 1968 to 1972.

Morrison was the commander of the Carrier Division during
the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin episode. He reached the rank of Rear Admiral in 1967
and retired in 1975. While they were 10 years apart in age, the two men were
both admirals from 1967 to 1972.

Besides educational and career similarities, the men both
had sons who had notable careers: John S. McCain III, Navy pilot, 2008 presidential
candidate and Senator, and Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors.

The death in August of Sen. McCain at age 81 deserved
attention, as he rose to the highest levels of American politics. I wouldn't
ordinarily associate him with a musician who wallowed in the mire of the
dissolute rock lifestyle and died at 27. Morrison died in Paris in 1971 while
McCain languished in a North Vietnamese prison, wracked by torture and
isolation but bolstered by an iron sense of loyalty to his fellow American
prisoners. However, McCain and Morrison shared the personal history as sons of
admirals, sons who chose different paths in life. Their fathers, too, had to
deal with traumas involving their sons. How did those complex father-son
relationships play out?

Jim Morrison and his father, George Morrison, on the bridge of the USS Bon Homme Richard, January 1964 (Photo: US Navy)

Adm. Morrison, the youngest admiral in the history of the
Navy, and his son had a tormented relationship that became no relationship. I
winced to read about the
primal clash between the boy and the Admiral:

Due to the admiral’s career, the Morrisons were always on
the move. By age four, Jimmy had already lived in five different places, coast
to coast. Since his father was gone for long periods, his mother Clara became
the disciplinarian. Jimmy grew rebellious. Returning home from duty, his
father, accustomed to thousands of men obeying his command promptly and without
question, had no patience with his first son’s insubordination and backtalk. He
spared no effort trying to get the boy on the straight and narrow.

In disciplining his eldest son, George Morrison used a
military “dressing down” approach: he would humiliate the boy to submission and
apology. When this became less effective with his precocious, increasingly
rebellious son, Admiral Morrison got old-fashioned. According to one
biographer, Stephen Davis, the father beat his son with a baseball bat. Jim
also confided to his lawyer that his father had sexually assaulted him, and
that he never forgave his mother for allowing it. Clara dismissed the charge as
one of her son’s malicious lies. “In spite of his medals,” said Jim of his
father, “he’s a weakling who let her [his wife] castrate him.”

Long after Jim’s death, Adm. Morrison and Jim's two siblings
talked to writer Ben Fong-Torres for The
Doors by the Doors, an authorized 2006 biography. From the comments, Adm.
Morrison’s reflections sounded wistful, and, to my ears, emotionally jarring:

"We look back on him with great delight . . . The fact
that he's dead is unfortunate but looking back on his life it's a very pleasant
thought," George Morrison says in the book.

Jim Morrison, a difficult teen who rebelled against his
father's military lifestyle, went on to become one of the most magnetic
performers in rock 'n' roll. But he disowned his family, and once made a
throwaway comment that they were dead. He also referenced his parents in the
Oedipal rant “The End,” singing that he wanted to kill his father and sleep
with his mother.

In fact, during Morrison’s time in Paris, the admiral had
been on his mind. Alan Ronay, an old college friend, spent weeks with Jim
there. “One night we had a conversation that was totally moving,” Ronay told
Morrison biographers James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky. “It was full of
affection … Jim telling funny stories about his dad and so on. The stories were
really tender and warm. I wish his parents could’ve heard it. I really felt
that he’d totally reclaimed himself.” But a few months later, he was dead.

Adm. Morrison outlived his prodigal son by 37 years. Unable
to work things out in life, the father did what he could in the decades that
followed. The Morrison family paid for upkeep of Jim’s grave in Paris, and Adm.
Morrison “traveled to Jim’s grave in Paris and installed a plaque of his own
making. Translated from Greek, it reads: True to his own spirit.” The Greek
said: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ.

While Jim Morrison pursued his muse, the future Sen. McCain
was trying to stay alive. How did his parents react to his plane being shot
down? Here is one
story about it:

McCain's son, naval aviator Lieutenant Commander John S.
McCain III, became a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in October 1967, after
being shot down and badly injured during a bombing raid over Hanoi. McCain's
prominence made the downing of his son front-page news. McCain and his wife
Roberta treated the news stoically, attending a dinner party in London without
indicating anything was wrong even though initial word indicated their son was
unlikely to have survived the shoot-down. McCain would later say little about
his son's captivity in public, other than that they had indications he was
alive and "that is something to live for.”

Like Adm. Morrison, Adm. McCain did not let family issues
override his military orientation. He ordered the April 1972 bombing of North
Vietnam, including the Hanoi area where his son was held prisoner. Ultimately,
after the Paris peace accords, Sen. McCain was released in 1973.

John McCain meets his father for the first time after his release from a North Vietnamese prison, March 31, 1973

A
column in Forbes magazine from December 31, 2017, provides an extended look
at Adm. McCain’s career and his response to his son’s capture. Titled “On
Senator John McCain, Son of Admiral John McCain,” it deserves quoting at
length. This passage shows his focus on military over family matters:

Admiral John McCain was named Commander in Chief of the
Pacific during the time when his son, Lieutenant Commander John McCain, was
held as a Prisoner of War by the North Vietnamese. His son’s captivity could
have colored decisions that Admiral McCain might have made. Admiral McCain,
Rowland believes, dutifully made a commitment that he would isolate the fact
that his son was a POW so that it would never affect any of his decisions as
Commander. Rowland:

"Admiral McCain made it crystal clear that no one would
mention Lt. Commander John McCain’s name in his presence. The day I signed in I
was told in no uncertain terms that the quickest way to get fired and kicked
out before sunset you would be to do so. My job was POWs,” recalled Rowland. 'I
handled enemy prisoners. My duties also transferred over to the Geneva
Convention and American POWs. I never, ever, briefed Admiral McCain but for one
time on a very distantly related issue which I will share.”

“Many years later,” said Rowland, “when Senator John McCain
was running for president his mother was interviewed on TV. It was revealing to
me that when she was presented with the observation, ‘That must have been some
experience for you to have your son released from captivity after Admiral
McCain left the command.’ Roberta McCain said, ‘It was as if he had come back
from the dead.’

And yet, as with Adm. Morrison laying a plaque at his son’s grave, Adm. McCain had deep human feelings for his son in captivity. How could he not? While these were men raised in a time where many emotions were reserved for the private sphere, they experienced love, regret, longing and happiness like all of us. In an article published in the Atlantic during the 2008 presidential campaign, “The Wars of John McCain,” Jeffrey Goldberg reports a telling anecdote from retired Army General John Nelson Abrams, son of Gen. Creighton Abrams, Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. It says,

“You could see there was genuine fondness between them, and
maybe in part because of the family commitment to the war, they were absolutely
focused on winning,” John Abrams said, speaking of the relationship between his
father and Admiral McCain. McCain, however, did not speak of his son’s
captivity. “He would never show his emotions like that,” Abrams told me.

After John McCain was released, in 1973, he learned that on
several Christmases during his captivity, his father had traveled to the
northernmost reaches of American-held territory, to be as close to him as
physically possible. And only in 1973 did Admiral McCain learn that John McCain
III had been singled out by the North Vietnamese for especially rigorous
torture because he was the son of an important admiral. The North Vietnamese,
in fact, referred to Admiral McCain’s son as the “prince.”

I wonder how a meeting between John McCain, the Senator, and Jim
Morrison, the Lizard King, would have gone; they never met in real life and for all I know never knew of each other's existence. Fate had other plans for
both of them. But had the fates decided otherwise, I like to think of McCain
and an older, sober Morrison getting together to talk about their naval
upbringing, their hard-charging fathers, and their lives in public service and
public entertainment. They'd share some laughs and reflections, argue about politics, maybe listen to Doors
albums and then go sailing on the ocean blue.